The year of the Dynamo

Ah.. Springtime. It is such a great time to celebrate new things. This Spring is no different. Snows are melting, trees are blooming, or soon will be. It’s a wonderful time to start something new. Plant garden. Take on a new hobby. Build a Tiny House. One thing I wanted to announce was a new role I will now have at NBBJ – that of Performance Analysis Lead. While this may seem like a big shift, it’s still in the realm of BIM, and gives me even more excuse to continue dabbling in the Design Computation world.

I’m at Midwest University 2015, which you can follow on Twitter with the hashtag #MU2015 (which incidentally, oddly also happens to be the hashtag for Miss Universe 2015. Who knew?). And this week, I am presenting a class titled: “Working Smarter in Revit with Dynamo”. Preparing for this class has made me think about the value Paradigm Shift brings to the AEC community. There tends to be a technology cycle. With it, I am going to be taking a slight bend in the road. Here goes…

I plan to write more about Dynamo. A lot more. Dynamo is a visual programming language to help make your own tools for doing all the things you wish your software did out of the box. Still don’t know what it is? I’ve written a little about tit in the past… however now, it will be a main focus. Stick with me and I promise you will find some value if you use Autodesk software, especially Revit.

Above is an example script that takes all the Revit walls and colors them according to a variation in the Fire Rating Parameter. I’ll explain it more in my next post. Using tools like Dynamo includes concepts revolving around, automation, model checking, Design Computation, Big Data, Performance Analysis and how the “i” in BIM can really be leveraged in new ways. I hope you will all join me in this transition and I look forward to the new roads ahead. Dynamo will be huge this year and I want to share with you all ways it can help you be more productive and happy in your work.